


Refuge

by Feather (lalaietha)



Category: Belgariad/Malloreon Series - David & Leigh Eddings
Genre: Community: kink_bingo, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-06-08
Updated: 2011-06-08
Packaged: 2017-10-20 06:15:49
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 742
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/209644
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lalaietha/pseuds/Feather
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Same universe as my <a href="http://archiveofourown.org/works/194900">gratia gratium parit</a>, for the prompt "confined/caged".</p>
            </blockquote>





	Refuge

Relg fits door on their cavern without Taiba having to ask. She knows having it is as good as shouting _look over here, I'm not one of you_ , but she's at peace with that. She isn't. The caves are good for now, are safe and welcoming, in their way; but there are plains in her head, green and living with their stands of trees and willow-thickets, with creeks and the little bluffs of the trees that share her name. Right now on that plain there are only ghosts (and only ghosts, because she can feel her God with her), but she'll bring the living to sing to them again.

Sometimes, when she thinks that kind of thing, Taiba stops, looks at her thoughts and almost laughs. But under that, under that -

She's never really had anything that's been hers. Not much. But there's a whole country that's hers and, for now, hers alone. The ache to see it and smell its wind, taste its water and feel its earth . . .the ache is dormant for now, a wistful thought. But she thinks that won't be forever. Not forever. For a while. She pretends that part of her isn't terrified of that. Of the questions she'll have to ask.

Instead, on the day they leave his brother's home and find their own (for now), when Relg closes that door Taiba tilts her head and bites the inside of her cheek. "It doesn't bother you? The door," she adds, when he looks at her. It's not the important thing she wonders, worries about, but it's _a_ thing. He is Ulgo; he is one of them. He grew up in the caves without a door, where only the inner rooms have curtains as it goes back from the central cavern into the rock. They can stand that, Taiba thinks. Maybe because to be Ulgo is to never fear to have something taken away, never really long to have something between you and everyone else. Never to be really, truly afraid. Protected by mountains, protected by laws, protected by the Father of the Gods. Not very long ago Taiba could have, would have hated them for that. Now it just makes them strange to her, as strange as Errand used to be.

For her the door is safety. For her the door means that nobody gets to see, nobody gets to hear; that what she does, and how, is hers, too. For Relg, it might mean something else.

But he shakes his head. His hand stays resting on the stone beside the door, made from heavy wood that those who go above brought down for him. Them. He has the look he gets when he's trying to put words around something he knows, a picture in his head. He says, "When I was a child, when I heard the rock singing and knew I would be a diviner - I used to dream about stepping into the stone and walking, walking until I found a cave that only I would know. Dark and secret. Just tall enough to stand, wide enough for myself and food and a blanket to sleep on. I dreamed that I could stay there, just me in my cave in the heart of the world, where no one could find me and no one else could go."

His voice drifts a little, as if the old dreams catch him up; then he blinks and comes back. Shrugs, a little embarrassed. "As it turns out, not even diviners can live _forever_ without air," he says, his voice edged with self-amusement that Taiba doesn't think anyone else would catch. "But it was a nice dream, when my brother wouldn't stop talking at me."

Taiba doesn't laugh at him. She slides her hand into his, carefully, and rests her other on the door. "Not quite a tiny cave," she says. The skin around Relg's eyes reveals the smile.

"You wouldn't have fit in my dream-cave," he tells her, thumb brushing back and forth on the back of her hand, lighting pleasant sparks in her skin. Taiba gives her husband a look of over-done solemnity.

"And short of another cave-in," she informs him, "you are never carrying me through rock _again_."

Relg does laugh at her, in his quiet way, but he also works an arm around her waist of his own accord, making up for it. "This is enough," he says and he kisses her temple, too.


End file.
